If you invest in website development for your business, you expect a return on your investment. To see that return, your business website needs to serve as an effective sales pitch. Like any sales pitch, you want your website to be compelling, easy to understand and clear in its messaging. Effective web design can be the difference between a new client and a lost prospect.
On the internet, undivided attention is a hot commodity. With a never ending supply of content and thousands of advertisements, it can be difficult to capture a prospective client’s full attention. However, when someone visits your website, their focus is solely on your business. You’re no longer competing for their attention. It’s all yours!
Therefore, the best place to persuade potential clients to do business with you is your website. It should tell them more about your business and its history, answer frequently asked questions and showcase your previous work. To create a website for your business, developers and designers (like the ones here at Interscope Media) pay close attention to a variety of elements including layout, aesthetic and user experience. When understood properly, these elements combine to create pleasing web design.
Simple, sleek layouts are pleasing and professional.
Site visitors come to your website with a purpose: to learn more about your services. They do not come to view overly complex, fancy layouts. Complicated, cluttered designs distract site visitors from gathering information. If site visitors become frustrated or overwhelmed with the visual framework of your site, they will leave the site completely. For this reason, you never want your website’s layout to make it difficult for prospective clients to find what they came looking for.
Generally, the simplest web design layouts are the most effective. Sleek layouts that strategically use negative space (areas intentionally left empty), reduce unnecessary information and use illustrations or decorations minimally are your best bet. Also, this design approach draws site visitors’ eye to the most important features of the webpage. These include the navigation menu, featured content, engaging videos and high resolution images. Clean and streamlined, a simple web design layout communicates professionalism while looking sharp.
A consistent aesthetic is everything.
If your website is not visually appealing, there is a good chance you are losing potential clients. Consistent aesthetic choices are crucial to communicating a unified brand identity across your website and across the wider web. The essential aesthetic elements are color, typography and visual balance. Colors are significant to your website’s aesthetic because they generate emotional responses. It is important to choose colors that elicit the type of emotional reaction you want. For example, warm hues will make site visitors more excited whereas cooler hues will give site visitors a sense of calm.
In addition, typography for long form text needs to be readable. Using a sans serif font will help achieve this. For headers and shorter main text, you can use a stronger serif font to create artistic interest. Lastly, visual balance helps demonstrate effective web design. Pick pictures that follow the rule of thirds and position content and graphics in a natural, flowing way. Keeping a consistent color scheme, reusing the same few fonts across each page, and picking cohesive images and video will help create a wonderful aesthetic.
Success hinges on user experience.
No matter how perfect a website looks, it means nothing if it’s not functional. Imagine that your website is like a car. A slick, classic convertible may be awesome, but it is more difficult to operate and likely needs more maintenance under the hood. Most people would not want to deal with owning that type of vehicle. Instead, they’d choose a reliable car that is easy to operate. In the same way, people crave ease of use and reliability when they visit a website.
Good user experience (UX) means designing in a way that site visitors need to make as little effort as possible to navigate your website. Unfortunately, attention spans are short. If visitors can find information more easily on a competitor’s website, they’ll leave yours and go visit theirs. In addition, websites need to be responsive so they automatically adjust to different screen sizes. This is extremely important since more people are accessing websites from their cell phones. If the size and format of your site don’t look right on a prospective client’s device, you will likely lose their business.
Hiring reputable web design experts makes all the difference.
The last thing you want is a poorly designed website to dissuade site visitors from becoming clients. Clunky layouts, questionable aesthetics and bad user experience will hurt your website’s performance. When you hire reputable professionals who follow web design best practices, your website will turn out wonderfully! Here at Interscope Media, we build websites with the intent of making them useful for your business and its unique needs.
Our web development work is driven by a commitment to crisp layouts, pleasing aesthetics and user friendliness. If you are interested in this service, don’t hesitate to contact us today. We are eager and ready to build you a high quality business website!
